Georgia Natural Wonder #106 - Savannah – Chatham County - Antebellum (Part 5). 562

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Georgia Natural Wonder  #106 - Savannah – Chatham County - Antebellum (Part 5)

O.K. here we are on post #5 on Savannah and we finally move past the Revolutionary War. The British did not leave Savannah until July 1782.


First capital of Georgia.

After the Revolution, Savannah was again the first capital of Georgia, relinquishing that role to Augusta in 1786. In December 1804 the state legislature declared Milledgeville the new capital of Georgia. President George Washington visited Savannah in 1791.



During his stay he called on Catharine Greene of nearby Mulberry Grove plantation.


Catherine in black.

She was the widow of General Nathanael Greene, commander of the Continental army in the southern theater, who had been awarded Mulberry Grove in recognition of his services to the cause of independence.



A monument to Greene was dedicated in Savannah in 1825.



The ceremony was led by another famous Revolutionary hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, during a visit to the city that year.


Lafayette on Balcony in Savannah.

It was at Mulberry Grove plantation in 1793 that Eli Whitney, a tutor to the Greene children, perfected the first working cotton gin.Sea Island or long-staple cotton had been very profitable in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War, but the production of this variety was relegated to the narrow coastal zone and would not grow in the upland interior of the South. Green-seed cotton could be grown in the uplands but was difficult to process with the pre-1793 roller gin; consequently, Whitney's invention opened the interior of the South to widespread cotton production.



Eli Whitney lived in Georgia for just a year, on Catharine Greene's Mulberry Grove plantation near Savannah. During his stay, Whitney had occasion to meet neighboring planters who would sometimes call on Catharine Greene. Over dinner one evening, two such guests discussed the region's agricultural economy and lamented the difficulty of separating upland cotton from its seeds. Unlike Sea Island, or long staple, cotton, which had been ginned successfully for some time, the green seeds belonging to the upland, or short staple, variety clung tenaciously to the fibers, requiring separation by hand. As Whitney would later recount in a letter to his father, the planters advised him that a machine capable of efficiently cleaning cotton "would be a great thing both to the Country and to the inventor." At Greene's behest, he undertook to construct such a machine. Completed in only six months, Whitney's cotton engine (or "gin") consisted of wire teeth set in a wooden cylinder that, when rotated, separated cotton fibers from the seed. A second, smaller cylinder revolved simultaneously in the opposite direction so as to sweep the cotton fibers from the wire teeth.



Although simple in design, Whitney's gin revolutionized the southern economy. Within only a few years, cotton replaced indigo and tobacco as the region's major cash crop. In 1801 planters produced 48 million pounds of cotton as compared with just 2 million pounds a decade earlier. By the eve of the Civil War, the South's cotton production exceeded a billion pounds annually.



In New England the cotton industry flourished as new mills appeared nearly overnight to keep pace with increased southern production and growing market demand for cotton textiles. Previously a luxury item available only to the wealthy, cotton fabric was now within the financial reach of ordinary farmers. But the cotton gin also resulted in the expansion of slavery in the South. Because cotton is a labor-intensive crop, the spread of cultivation deepened and broadened the region's dependence on slave labor.



Antebellum Period

The development of Georgia's interior had a tremendous impact on Savannah, as cotton production was focused on lands newly appropriated from the Creeks along the upper Savannah River. Planters on both the Georgia and South Carolina sides of the river shipped their cotton downriver to market and export at Savannah. Antebellum Savannah was built around slavery and agriculture, primarily the chief money crops of cotton and rice, and was one of the leading cotton-shipping ports in the world.



By 1820 Savannah was the eighteenth largest city in the United States and had established its preeminence as an international shipping center, with exports exceeding $14 million. Cotton remained the principal export until the Civil War (1861-65), when it made up 80 percent of the agricultural products shipped from Savannah.



Antebellum Riverside Docks remarkably still preserved for most part.



The S.S. Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean from the United States to Europe, sailed from Savannah in May 1819, arriving at Liverpool in twenty-nine days. We covered this before with Tybee Island.



In 1833 the Central of Georgia Railway (originally the Central Railroad and Canal Company of Georgia), in which the city of Savannah was the largest stockholder, received its charter from the Georgia legislature. This line, from Savannah to Macon, was completed in 1843, allowing more cotton to be shipped from the interior of the state to the coast.


Before.

The Georgia State Railroad Museum includes the historic Roundhouse.


Today.

Savannah, like many coastal cities in the nineteenth century, suffered its share of cataclysmic disasters associated with fire, water, and disease.
Destructive fires in 1796 and 1820, both particularly damaging to the commercial districts, left about half the city in ruins.Savannah has a wealth of 19th century architecture, but almost nothing survives from the 18th century.



The reason is two major fires (in 1796 and 1820), both of which burned an enormous portion of the city. Savannah’s Great Fire of 1796 was one of the most devastating fires ever to have struck an American city at that time. Only a few years earlier, Savannah and its people had emerged from the years of the Revolutionary War seemingly well poised to capitalize on its growing position as a shipping and mercantile center. Over a single night, most of its progress was lost.


Ruins of Cathedral 1796 Fire.

The great Savannah Fire of 1820 was helped by a high wind, fire destroyed most of the downtown area. Sometime after 1 a.m., a fire broke out in a livery stable behind a boarding house in Savannah. The fire spread to Bay Street and then on the city market, where illegal kegs of gunpowder were stored.  When the fire reached Ellis Square it touched off the gunpowder.There was a massive explosion, resulting in the fire spreading throughout the city. By the next afternoon, 463 buildings had been burned to the ground, and two out of every three Savannah residents were homeless. The cause of the fire was never officially determined, though it was believed to have been arson.



A major hurricane in September 1854 flooded the local rice and cotton plantations and greatly injured the port and shipping in the area. It was called the  “Great Carolina” Hurricane, 1854.This hurricane made landfall in September of 1854 as a Category 3. It had max winds of 100 kt. The storm made landfall near the Georgia-South Carolina border and moved north. It was given the nickname “Great Carolina.” (Storms were not given official names until 1953). Hutchinson Island was completely submerged, while there was significant inundation in eastern Savannah.



The already difficult years of 1820 and 1854 were made disastrous by severe yellow fever epidemics. More than 700 people died of yellow fever in 1820.


Marker and mass grave 1820.

Slightly more than 1,000 perished from the disease in 1854. Locals who could afford to leave fled the city and businesses shut down. Yellow fever was a scary and mysterious disease bringing on a sudden and painful death. Early symptoms included chills, followed by a fever, back pains, and jaundice (yellow-green tint to the skin) which gave the disease its name. After uncontrollable hemorrhaging from the mouth, nose and stomach, death often soon followed. About sixty percent of those infected died and the disease usually ran its course in about six or seven days.



The census of 1860 certified Savannah as Georgia's largest city (a distinction it had held since the birth of the colony), with 14,580 free inhabitants, including 705 free blacks, in addition to 7,712 slaves. By the time of the Civil War, Savannah's free black population was among the most entrepreneurial in the South, with established interests in small businesses, agriculture, land ownership and, in some cases, even slave ownership.



By this time Savannah was regarded as one of the most beautiful and tranquil cities in America, particularly after Forsyth Park was laid out in 1851.



Late 18th/Early 19th century

On January 27, 1785, members of the State Assembly gathered in Savannah to found the nation's first state-chartered, public university—the University of Georgia (in Athens).


Vintage 1700's golf clubs on E-Bay.

In 1792 the Savannah Golf Club opened within a mile of Fort Jackson, on what is now President Street. It is the first known American golf club.


Fort Jackson.

In 1804 Candler Hospital was founded, and is the second oldest hospital in America in continuous operation. Candler Hospital is a historic 384 bed hospital currently located at 5353 Reynolds Street in Savannah, Georgia. It was originally founded in 1804 as a Seamen's Hospital and poor house and eventually became known as Savannah Hospital. In 1931 the hospital was endowed by Coca-Cola founder, Asa Griggs Candler and renamed after his brother Warren Akin Candler, who led the hospital to become affiliated with the Methodist Church. Candler Hospital later merged St. Joseph's Hospital, another hospital also located in Savannah. The Candler campus is now home to the Nancy N. and J.C Lewis Cancer & Research Pavilion and the Mary Telfair Women's Hospital.


The original Candler Hospital building is now home to Savannah Law School.

In 1828, construction began on the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal, a 16.5-mile canal connecting the Ogeechee River to the southwest (near present-day Richmond Hill) and the Savannah River, slightly to the west of Savannah's newly established riverfront. We covered this in our Bryan County post.The canal was completed in 1831, directing the resources of Georgia's south-central interior to Savannah.



The expansions of Savannah during the 1830s and 1840s led to the need for a new city map, which was published by Edward A. Vincent in 1853.



Despite its small population, Savannah amassed an enormous amount of wealth. By 1820, Savannah was exporting $18 million worth of goods. It is important to recognize.We could go on forever about antebellum Savannah. There are so many tours , all the city parks. House after house  of 1800's America beautifully restored and preserved.



American Civil War



Fort Pulaski, on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, was constructed between 1829 and 1847 (Robert E. Lee, as a young West Point graduate, oversaw some of the early phases of construction). We covered this in our Tybee Island post. After the war started and he got beat at the Battle of Cheat Mountain in West Virginia, he was sent to organize the coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard. He was  appointed commander, "Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida" on November 5, 1861. Between then and the fall of Fort Pulaski, April 11, 1862, he put in place a defense of Savannah that proved successful in blocking Federal advance on Savannah. Confederate fort and naval gunnery dictated night time movement and construction by the besiegers. Federal preparations required four months. In those four months, Lee developed a defense in depth. Behind Fort Pulaski on the Savannah River, Fort Jackson was improved, and two additional batteries covered river approaches. In the face of the Union superiority in naval, artillery and infantry deployment, Lee was able to block any Federal advance on Savannah, and at the same time, well-trained Georgia troops were released in time to meet McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. The City of Savannah would not fall until Sherman's approach from the interior at the end of 1864.


Young Lee.

In early 1861, three months before the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Confederate forces seized Fort Pulaski. The brick masonry fortification was considered impregnable until it was forced to surrender in April 1862 to Union forces using rifled artillery, a new technology in siege warfare. For the remainder of the war, Savannah was blockaded from its seaward side, and conditions for the city's civilian population became extremely difficult.



Savannah fell to Union general William T. Sherman at the end of his army's march to the sea from Atlanta. On December 22, 1864, Sherman transmitted his famous telegram to U.S. president Abraham Lincoln in which he presented "as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition; and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."



In November 1864, two months after capturing the city of Atlanta, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his army of 62,000 men began the march south to Savannah. They lived off the land and, by Sherman's own estimate, caused more than $100 million in property damage in Georgia alone. Sherman called this harsh tactic of material war "hard war" (in modern times this is known as total war).


Sherman's HQ Savannah.

Sherman and his troops captured Savannah on December 22, 1864. Sherman then telegraphed his commander-in-chief, President Abraham Lincoln, offering him the city as a Christmas present.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.

During the Civil War (1861-65), Chatham County became an important center of trade for the Confederacy, as the multitude of creeks and rivers in the area made the total blockade of the port of Savannah difficult for the Union.



Other than the brief attack on Fort Pulaski in April 1862, and a minor skirmish on Whitmarsh Island, the war bypassed Chatham County until the very end, when Union general William T. Sherman occupied the area in December 1864 at the conclusion of his march to the sea.



Sherman issued his famous "Forty Acres and a Mule" Field Order No. 15 here on January 16, 1865. As Sherman marched through Georgia toward Savannah from November 15 to December 21, 1864, slaves left the Georgia plantations to follow him. Once in Savannah, Sherman realized he had to do something about the Black folks who had followed him so he and Stanton called for a meeting with Black elders to ask what they wanted.  "Forty Acres and a Mule"? In summary, the Black attendees in this historic meeting told Stanton and Sherman that they wanted land to grow food and a community of their own to develop.



Sherman responded with the famous "Field Order 15." In the "Order" Sherman provided 40 acres for families in the abandoned land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida "low country." Sherman also ultimately offered Army mules that might be available - thus the, "Forty Acres and a Mule". As a result, untold numbers of the Black families almost immediately moved into the lowlands.



I know I missed a lot, this is starting to get overwhelming. let's end this for the day and I present a Savannah Southern Belle GNW Gal for the day.